Lord Northwick's Picture Gallery at Thirlestaine House

Robert Huskisson, 1820–1861

between 1846 and 1847

Oil on canvas

Yale Center for British Art

Two women in period dress stand in a richly decorated room filled with paintings. A small dog is visible on the red carpet in the foreground. John Rushout, 2nd Baron Northwick (1769-1859), was one of the greatest connoisseurs of the nineteenth century. In 1838 he purchased Thirlestaine House, a Greek revival mansion in Cheltenham, to house his exceptional collection of over five hundred pictures. Every afternoon between one and three o’clock the doors were opened so that the public could view his collection free of charge. In this view of part of his collection a recently acquired Madonna by Botticelli sits on the mobile easel while portraits attributed to Titian flank the doorway above landscapes by Claude Lorraine and Francis Danby. On the right hand wall hangs a Rubens